One
of President Assad's rare progressive initiatives, an effort to open
Syria's economy has come to a halt under domestic protests and
international sanctions, threatening to add to the country's political
woes

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's face is displayed on a street ad reading "Together we build." AP

DAMASCUS, Syria -- Over the last two weeks, as forces loyal to Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad slaughtered protesters, provoking outrage
across the globe, the European Union and White House announced sanctions
against Assad and leading members of his regime.

Syria's
government howled in anger. "Today, the Europeans have added a black
page to their record of colonialism in the region," said the foreign
minister, Walid Muallem, adding that the measures would "harm the Syrian
people."

Analysts say that Mr. Muallem is wrong, the sanctions
will have limited effect on Syrian citizens. But the country's
struggling economy and a gaping rich-poor divide both help explain why
protests there happened in the first place. Sanctions or no, the
chaotic, isolated new Syria will have serious financial problems.

Until
protests began and were bloodily repressed two months ago, tourists
were a growing source of Syrian revenue, with 16 percent of the working
population in the hospitality sector and millions of visitors bringing
in valuable foreign currency.

But a crackdown on protests that
activists say has killed at least 850 people has thrown parts of the
country into violent unrest, and most embassies advised their citizens
to leave at once.

In the streets where Arabic students and
backpackers used to buy Oriental knick-knacks, there are only
plain-clothed security forces and grumpy shopkeepers.

The
National Museum in Damascus, for years a joke with visitors for its
enigmatic signs and gloomy displays of priceless Roman statues, is
currently getting a facelift, and workers are busily painting and
decorating bright new galleries.

But aside from Syrian art
students drawing in the sunlit sculpture garden, there are scant
visitors to admire the new look, nor are the bored attendants expecting
many this summer.

"The
gap between Syria's rich and poor has grown as the economy has
liberalized."

"People do want change, but Syria was growing,"
said one young man in a ceramics shop in Damascus. "Now was not the
time to bring down the government -- this year was going to be such a
big year for Syrian tourism." He and many other shopkeepers said
business was terrible. Hotel owners have had to fire waiters and
cleaners.

The death of tourism is only the first sign of the economic devastation that recent upheaval has inflicted.

Since
Bashar al-Assad inherited power from his father Hafez in 2000, Syria
has undergone a degree of economic liberalization; it has built trade
relationships, particularly with Europe and neighboring Turkey, and
encouraged private banking and business.

The national GDP has
more than tripled from $20 billion in 2000 to over $60 billion last
year. For many people, particularly the urban middle classes, life has
changed enormously.

The proliferation of banks and credit allowed
people to buy things -- cars, houses, electric goods -- that they could
not previously afford. Fewer trade restrictions have meant that there
are far more of these goods on the market, from China and Turkey among
others.

The main architect of the more open economy was Abdullah
al-Dardari, deputy prime minister for economic affairs since 2005, who
speaks English and was popular with the reformists at the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund.

But he was not so popular among
poor Syrians. Oil revenues in Syria are drying up fast, and the reforms
were paid for by withdrawing fuel subsidies and state provision of
education and healthcare.

"Of course people feel they have been
hurt by the gradual withdrawal of the state from areas they used to be
involved in," said a Damascus economist who asked not to be named. "The
gap between Syria's rich and poor has grown as the economy has
liberalized."
Many protesters also cite endemic corruption as a primary grievance, pointing out that friends and relatives of the president control huge chunks of the economy.

Dardari was not part of the new government hastily
assembled by the president when he unveiled concessions to the
protesters, a move that the economist called "highly symbolic." The
message, he said, is that Syria is moving back toward the old social
policies.

Outside the fast-growing and increasingly cosmopolitan
cities, Syria's rural majority have seen living costs rise as fuel
prices have made transport more expensive. Markets flooded with foreign
goods have made manufacturing less profitable and years of drought have
left farmers in some areas starving.

It is these have-nots, said
one Western diplomat, who have been driving the protest movement. Unlike
in Egypt where the urban, web-savvy upper-middle class played a major
role in protests, many of Syria's city-dwellers have seen their lives
improve in recent years.

Some young elites have railed against
the brutal, undemocratic regime, he added, and more would if they were
not so afraid, but the protests have mostly been in poor towns and
cities, sparked by economic woes.

It was these disaffected
Syrians that Assad sought to soothe when he unveiled a program of new
economic measures last month, including higher wages for civil servants,
new jobs, more subsidies, and a social fund.

"In the long term
they can't afford the reforms," the economist said bluntly. Dardari's
recently unveiled five-year-plan was due to improve infrastructure and
provide jobs in huge projects, but relied on more than $50 billion in
investment over five years, largely from outside the country. The money
is now unlikely to materialize -- investors are unwilling to put money
into a country as unpredictable and unpopular as Syria is now.

The
protests have caused other problems. The trucks that drive goods
through Syria to the Arabian Peninsula have slowed to a trickle, cutting
off a valuable source of revenue in border taxes. Consumer confidence
has slowed; scared people do not buy much. The government has announced
it will increase its deficit for the moment, a risky route for a country
with no new sources of income on the horizon.

The end of
liberalization will make it difficult for the government to tackle
structural problems, said the diplomat, and ensure more unrest in
future. "With the root causes not dealt with, discontent will happen
again unless genuine reforms address the issue," he said.

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